This dream had been different, though. It was full of intrigue, suspense, and Zahra wanted to know what happened next. Maybe the girl would see her own death? Or maybe not, Zahra thought. She’s a crafty one, so she won’t go down that easily. She was a fighter, a survivor, and something or someone made her like that. A passing breeze of pity blew through her mind but it didn’t last long—whatever had happened in the girl’s past was no excuse for her behavior. She had chosen to live that life and she was responsible for her actions.
Zahra’s phone vibrated on her bedside table and she rolled over to reach it.
Jayce Tohmatsu: Good morning. Can you meet me in my office at 7:30am?
Zahra smiled and quickly texted back: Morning. Sure, see you then.
*
The razorblade ran up the smooth skin of her leg while droplets of water ran down to her toes. Zahra was taking her time, as there was no need to rush this morning. She still had two hours until she had to be at Mason. Once she was positive not a single stray hair remained on her legs, she washed out the conditioner and turned off the shower. Zahra wrapped herself in a fresh towel and began to comb the knots from her long hair. She stared at the girl in the mirror and wondered which part of her exactly had captured the attention of Jayce Tohmatsu. Her body warmed as she thought of him now and she couldn’t deny it: she was excited. His lips on the nape of her neck, his hands wrapping in her hair; she remembered every detail—she’d felt alive when he’d kissed her, and she wanted more. Today, though, they would be in his office, and although it was private, she wasn’t sure what would happen between them.
By the time Zahra had finished getting dressed, her bedroom looked like Macy’s after a clearance sale: stuff was everywhere. Shoes, dresses, belts and even lingerie were strewn across her room. She’d never had so much difficulty getting dressed for work. Due to her principle of investing in good quality pieces that were classic yet versatile, on a normal day she took no longer than two minutes to style her outfit. Today, however, was a blockbuster marathon of outfits before she finally settled on the first skirt and top combo she had originally tried on. So was life, she thought.
*
Olivia immediately looked up when Zahra stepped out of the elevator.
“Good morning, Zahra, please go through.”
Zahra returned the morning greeting and noticed that Olivia took stock of her outfit. There could be several reasons she would do that, Zahra thought, but she wondered if jealousy was the primary one. Zahra made a mental note to find out if Olivia had a boyfriend, and she knew exactly where to inquire: Holly McCabe. Good ol’ Holly knew everything.
Whether it was nerves or excitement, she didn’t know, but her stomach was full of butterflies when she pushed open the door to Jayce’s office. His eyes locked on hers as she took the first step inside and closed the door behind her. A broad, sexy smile beamed on his handsome face. Zahra walked steadily toward him, her heels clicking on the tiles. She stopped at the chair opposite him but he shook his head. He held up his hand, his index finger directing her around the corner of his desk, stopping her right in front of his chair.
“Jayce!” Zahra squealed. She had gone from standing to straddling in two seconds flat.
“Shh! If you’re going to scream like that, I’ll have to gag you,” he said and smirked.
Being gagged by Jayce Tohmatsu was an image that left her even more flustered. Zahra draped one arm around his neck and let her fingers rest on his shoulder, steadying herself.
“How was your weekend?” he asked.
“It was good. Jemma and I went to a cooking class on Saturday night and then yesterday was a mix of errands and work.” She left out the finer details of the cooking class, including the blindfolded taste tests and every imaginable use of chocolate. “Did you actually have a weekend?”
He wrapped his arms around her tighter until her chest rubbed against his. “No, but that’s the way I like it.” He paused, his lips just an inch from hers. “Did you bring your lipstick?”
It was in her pocket. Jayce had sent her a message not long after she arrived at the office with the instruction. “Yes. Did you want to borrow it?”
He kissed her, his tongue deep in her mouth and she kissed him back, wanting more of him, wanting to taste all of him. He moaned as she tilted her hips forward, rubbing against the hard bulge in his pants. Zahra closed her eyes, her pulse racing at the speed of light.
“No, I don’t want to borrow your lipstick—that’s not really my thing, but I’ve wanted to do that all weekend and you can’t walk in here with lipstick on and leave with bare lips.” His voice was husky, his sentence broken, his words intermittently spoken. His mouth trailed from her earlobe to her neck to her mouth again and they kissed passionately, all consuming, like two lovers who had been destined to find each other.
A moment later, Olivia’s voice filtered through the intercom, fracturing their hypnotic connection. Jayce cleared his throat but didn’t let go of Zahra; instead, he held her tighter, advising he would be done in five minutes.
Zahra let out the breath she had been holding, sure that Olivia would be able to hear her ragged breathing even over the intercom. Jayce had managed to sound perfectly unaffected but he, too, let out a shaky sigh as he leaned back, pulling Zahra flush against his chest.
“This is all your fault,” he said.
Zahra laughed. “Yeah, sure it is. You made the first move, Tohmatsu.”
His eyes sparkled. “You were asking for it. Red lips, red nails and this skirt,” he said, tugging on the fabric, “is a very daring combination, Miss Foster. Come on, there’s a bathroom in here.” Jayce took her hand and led her to the other side of his office where a cabinet door opened to reveal a sleek, modern bathroom.
Zahra nodded her head in approval and she pulled her lipstick out of her pocket, assiduously reapplying to get the lines just right. Jayce stood behind her, leaning against the doorframe, watching her in the mirror. Long lashes veiled his eyes but they couldn’t hide his nostalgic gaze. Curtly he shook his head and dropped his eyes. He tucked in his shirt and then, standing behind her, wiped his face with a white washcloth and then threw it in the basket. Zahra listened as he walked back to his desk, each step echoing in a steady, controlled rhythm.
Zahra took another minute to smooth her hair back into the neat, tousled waves she had walked in with but her cheeks were still flushed. She wanted to splash some cold water onto them but she couldn’t risk ruining her makeup. At least it’s partly hidden by my bronzer, she thought. Satisfied, she turned on her heels and went back to the man sitting on the edge of his desk. A sexy smile formed on his lips as she stopped in front of him but not within touching distance. Zahra didn’t dare take another step forward; she didn’t trust herself, or him, not to end up back in his lap.
“You look beautiful.” He looked like he wanted to say something else but he didn’t. Instead, he stood up and walked with her to the door.
“Have a good day, Jayce.” Zahra gave him a goodbye kiss on his cheek, rubbing the lipstick smudge off of his skin before she turned and walked out of the office.
There were five people now sitting on the couches by Olivia’s desk; no doubt they were there for his next meeting. Overall, though, the group looked a little nervous. The man seated closest to Olivia’s perfectly organized desk was absentmindedly scratching his fingernail on the leather binder that rested in his lap, the woman sitting alongside him was redoing her hair, and the woman beside her was picking the lint off her black sweater. Thus far, Zahra had seen very little of the ‘director’ Jayce Tohmatsu and she had no intention of ever getting reprimanded by him. Zahra was damn good at her job, so she would never give him a reason to do so, yet she could imagine that the experience would be quite unpleasant.
Eager to get to work, Zahra headed straight for Holly’s office where she was sitting at her desk sipping on a chai latte with Pusha T blaring from her computer. She swore listening to hip-hop made her work harder and faste
r. Personally, Zahra thought it to be distracting. The only time she listened to music was on the treadmill.
“What’s cooking, Holly?” Zahra surveyed the documents categorized on the desk and spotted a new set of fabric swatches. Reaching for them, she flicked through the squares. She knew what she was searching for.
“They came in yesterday for Luma. What do you think?”
Luma Street was another development that was well underway. In contrast to Church Street, this project was less flashy but still strikingly beautiful. Her team had yet to finalize the concepts and Zahra knew what she wanted, but the difficulty was in translating the images in her mind into actual concepts. She was searching for a particular hue but, although she knew exactly how to describe the shade, she couldn’t tell Holly because it was the color of Jayce’s eyes.
“Close, but not quite right…” Zahra said, searching for the alternative words that she needed. “Is this the complete set of their selections? If so I need the team to source additional suppliers.”
Holly dropped her pen onto the table. “It’s very hard to tell them what to source when you can’t describe the color.”
“I know. I’ll find a reference and give it to them—leave it with me.”
“Also, Eddie called yesterday. He has finished the furniture samples you requested. Do you want to go see them this afternoon?” Holly asked, smiling and nodding her head up and down excitedly.
Zahra laughed. She loved it when her team got as excited about their work as she did. “Let’s do it!”
The women sat together in Holly’s office for another forty-five minutes discussing everything from blueprints to wallpaper. Seven high-rise developments on the go at once were pushing the limits of her team, but they would make it work—they had to. And Zahra would ensure every building was finished in her trademark perfection even if it killed her in the process. Her future forecast predicated early starts and late nights with the chance of a chaotic storm.
“All right, I’m going downstairs to get a coffee and then I’m going to find that color reference,” Zahra said, more to herself than to Holly, mentally organizing her mind. “Oh, by the way, do you know Olivia Tolley? Tohmatsu’s assistant? I thought I saw her out last Friday night with a very hot guy. Has she got a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know her all that well but I don’t think she’s got a boyfriend. Maybe she was just hooking up? He’s hot, though? Damn! Lucky girl.”
It was all a lie. Zahra even threw in the ‘hot guy’ just for fun and with the endless gossip generated at Mason this story would be lucky to get any air time. Regardless, she had no desire to be known as a gossiper and decided to kill the rumor as quickly as she had birthed it. Zahra shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, it might not even have been her. They were quite far away and it was dark.”
*
Zahra’s stomach growled as she waited impatiently for her latte. “How was your week, Lou?” she asked the master barista behind the counter.
“Busy,” she replied. The word meant little, but the saucy grin on her face told a much different story.
Zahra smiled. “Please do share.”
“We’ve been experiencing an unusual early morning rush. Mr. Tohmatsu has slipped into a morning routine of picking up breakfast here at seven. Let’s just say, that is now our peak rush of the day. I had to bring in three extra staff!”
After laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, Zahra wondered if she might be the most ridiculous of the lot. “Well, at least he’s good for business. Mason will have the lowest tardy rates in history.”
Nodding her head in agreement, Lou handed Zahra her latte and a green juice.
Back in her office, Zahra swept her eyes over her emails, looking for anything urgent, thankfully not seeing anything that couldn’t wait until that evening. Jayce had never emailed her, she realized, and she suspected that his assistant having access to his account might’ve been the reason why. Zahra took a large mouthful of her latte, the warm, caffeine-loaded liquid running through her veins while she opened up Google.
Jayce Tohmatsu
Pictures of Jayce flooded her screen and she chose a close-up. Using the eyedropper tool, she hovered it over the pixel color she wanted to identify and then sent the code to Holly. Reference problem solved.
*
The day had been long and when Zahra finally turned off her computer, it was 11:30 p.m. George Stavros was standing tall and alert when she arrived home. George was her doorman and had been ever since she’d moved into the building. He had broad shoulders and a looming height that would have been frightening if not for his dazzling smile. Zahra always made an effort to match his uplifting mood, even when all she wanted to do was to crawl into bed.
“Hey, George!”
“Evening, Miss Foster. You’re home late again. I hope that new boss isn’t driving you crazy.”
Zahra giggled. “He’s all right.” She shook his hand, “How is the family?”
George’s family were everything to him, and he was possibly the most selfless man she had ever met. Hard-working, caring and generous: a testament to the basic goodness of humankind.
“They are well. Marie’s busy baking her goodies—you know she sells them at four local bakeries now. She’s looking for a commercial site so she can expand her business.”
Marie was his wife and an equally kind woman. They had raised three children and it was nice to now see Marie doing something for herself, Zahra thought. And she could vouch for her cookies—they were damn fine. “She should be very proud,” Zahra said as he opened the door for her.
“Oh, I nearly forgot, a parcel arrived for you a few hours ago,” he said, smiling, as he walked up to the lobby desk and retrieved a FedEx package.
Zahra looked at it hesitantly. She never received packages at her home address.
“Uh, you gonna open it or you think it’s a bomb?”
Zahra smacked his shoulder and took the box from him. It was light and when she shook it, it didn’t make a sound. Interesting.
The elevator slowly climbed up until it stopped at the seventh floor, Zahra’s floor. She unlocked the door and dumped everything down onto her dining table. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen and slid it around the edges of the box. “What the hell?” Zahra said under her breath. Inside was a white envelope with a red ribbon. Pulling one end, the silk bow unraveled and with trembling hands she ripped open the envelope.
Do you trust me?
Four words printed on a ‘Mason With Compliments’ slip. Behind the slip was a ticket, printed off the Internet: Trapeze School New York. Only Jayce, Zahra thought. It was late, but she knew he would still be at the office so she called his cell.
“I was just thinking about you.”
She grinned, holding the ticket in her hand. “Well, I just received your delivery. Are we really going trapeze flying?”
“Yes, but only if you want to, of course. You’re a brave woman so I thought it would be right up your alley.”
“I see. And are you going to catch me, or let me fall?”
“Definitely let you fall,” he said with a laugh. “No, seriously though, I’ve never done it before but it does look fun. What do you think? We could do it this Saturday if you’re not busy.”
She had already made up her mind but she let him sweat it out for a few seconds. “I think it’s a brilliant idea. I’m in, so Saturday it is.”
“That’s my girl. Bring a change of clothes and we’ll go out for dinner afterward.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Get some sleep, Zahra.”
“Are you still at the office?”
“For a few more hours.”
Zahra heard him shift in his chair, a barely audible sigh escaping his lips. Lips she wanted to kiss. “Good night, Jayce.”
CHAPTER SEVEN - JAYCE
The hours couldn’t pass fast enough but finally, as it always did, the week came to an end. When he arrived at Zahra’s apartm
ent, he was greeted by the doorman, who introduced himself as George. He looked over Jayce carefully, much like a father looks over his daughter’s date. He was protective of Zahra, that much was obvious, and Jayce felt George’s eyes on him until he stepped into the elevator.
Zahra opened her door and the only clothes she wore were black leggings and a white sports bra. Her hair was pulled up into a tight ponytail and her lips were masked in red—she’d achieved everything she’d set out to: he stood there speechless.
“Do you want to come in?” The smile on her lips was sly.
He wanted to but then he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave. “No,” he said, pulling himself together. “We’ll be very late if I do.” He wrapped his hands around her small waist and she cradled his face in her hands, guiding his mouth to hers. She brushed her breasts against his chest and he inhaled sharply and then pushed her away. “That’s not fair, Zahra.”
She batted her eyelashes and shrugged her shoulders. “Have it your way,” she said. She put on a thin sweater and grabbed her bag, locking the door behind her. Jayce entwined his fingers with hers and led her down to the waiting car, nodding at George as they passed by.
“I love it when you wear your hair up like this,” he muttered, kissing the hollow behind her ear. “The first day I saw you, all I could think about was doing this.” It was part truth, part lie.
Zahra’s hand was on his leg and she reflexively squeezed it as he kissed her. Time ceased to exist and he was surprised when they arrived at their destination so quickly. He tugged playfully on her ponytail as they got out of the car. “Are you ready?”
“I’m warning you, Jayce Tohmatsu, I’m about to blow your mind.”
She was already blowing his mind, but he would never admit that to her.
They were greeted by Boriss, a man of Latvian descent with a strong Texan accent. Jayce introduced himself and his girlfriend, making sure to emphasize the girlfriend part, not because he was threatened by the man but because Zahra had deliberately worn a cleavage-enhancing top that would have tempted any straight man. After Boriss gave them the low down and fitted their safety belts, they walked over to the trapeze. The sun had set and the lights shone down on them from above.
The Secrets of Their Souls Page 6